Title : Attributing the Causes of Group Performance: Effects of Performance Quality, Task Importance, and Future Testing.

Descriptive Note : Technical rept.,

Corporate Author : FLORIDA UNIV GAINESVILLE DEPT OF PSYCHOLOGY

Personal Author(s) : Schlenker,Barry R. ; Forsyth,Donelson R.

Report Date : 01 DEC 1975

Pagination or Media Count : 34

Abstract : An egocentric perception model of attribution suggests that three major factors affect self-serving perceptual biases which occur after task performance: performance quality, the importance of the task, and the possibility of continuing to work on similar future tasks. To assess the effects of these variables on attributions, 126 subjects worked in four-person, same-sex groups on a social sensitivity task. The 2 by 2 by 2 by 2 factorial design included: (a) group success or failure, (b) high versus low task importance, (c) expectations of future testing versus no future testing, and (d) sex of subjects. Although the manipulation checks indicated that the task importance and future testing manipulations were quite successful, only group performance consistently affected attributions. As compared to subjects in groups that failed, successful subjects attributed greater responsibility for the performance to self, average group member, and group as a whole, and attributed the cause of the performance more to personal ability and less to internal constraints, situational distractions, and task difficulty. The results support an information processing model of egocentrism rather than a self-serving motivational model, and extend previous findings of attributed causality that were obtained in individual testing situations to group testing situations. (Author)